Consumers of media are rapidly moving away from using traditional media applications, such as media players that play physical media, to digital media applications, such as content providers that offer streaming of media in real time. For example, content providers such as Hulu.com, Amazon.com, iTunes, and others, provide users with access to a huge library of images, television shows, movies, podcasts, and so on, presenting the media to the users by streaming content from their servers to the user's computing devices. Among a variety of systems, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) systems enable these content providers, such as providers of music, movies, images, and so on, to easily stream media to user devices remotely located from UPnP servers of the content providers, by utilizing UPnP protocols to facilitate searching and retrieving media from the servers.
Typically, in order to provide users with fast, reliable streaming of desired media, a content provider stores available media files at the a UPnP server, or more specifically, a UPnP AV server. Although storing the media at the server, or at primary storage locations associated with the server, enables for a reliable streaming of media from the server, such storage is expensive to purchase, maintain, and power, which can limit the variety of media offered to users by a content provider. There is a need for a system that overcomes the above problems, as well as providing additional benefits.